What’s Next For F Street?

Sigh……another office building. I daydream that we had so much demand for housing downtown that they would have to convert office buildings to housing. Would be so cool to have triple (or more!) the number of people living downtown that we have now…….

Riggin is a lifelong D.C. resident and nearly a lifelong D.C. criminal. His first larceny conviction as an adult dates back to December 1946, court records show. Prison sentences, probation and fines followed for larceny in 1947, burglary in the 1960s, illegal gambling in 1985, criminal copyright infringement in 1986 and drugs in 1993. The list goes on.

This guy’s a DC institution! He’s been engaging in massive larceny and fraud before most of us were kneehigh to a junebug.

What’s going on with Jemal and the new Waffle Shop? Wasn’t that supposed to go up near the new Convention Center?

What’s going on with Jemal and the new Waffle Shop? Wasn’t that supposed to go up near the new Convention Center?

@Monkeyrotica – In Jemal’s recent plans, The Waffle Shop is planned to go on the 600 block of K Street. Thats the block just north of the current NPR HQ.

nice catch with the photos!

So long as the new tower still has first-floor retail, bless ’em — maybe having 10 floors of potential customers upstairs will inspire someone to open a business that’s a little less shady than, well, than basically all of the non-brunch-related businesses on that block.

Don’t plan on Jemal doing much of anything. Word on the street is that he has mortgaged most of his properties and is putting future projects on hold. Many empty buildings scheduled for demolition to create something new will stay vacant for a few more years.

Word on what street Anon?

From conversations with property owners who had pending deals, and commercial real estate people. The credit crisis will affect this area for some time.

Dozens of vacant store fronts will continue to haunt PQ as long as the District skews its tax policies to allow property owners to hold out for a big score. This is all courtesy of Mayor Fenty, Jack Evans, & the rest of the DC City Council, who are owned – body & soul – by developers.

Interesting…Very interesting…. Mayor Fenty, Jack Evans & the rest of the DC Council are friends of mine. I never once mention that they were owned by the developers. Anon, again… what property owners & what commercial real estate people? I must have talked to the same people, because they all told me ANON doesn’t know what he’s talking about..

While I certainly don’t know Fenty, Evans, Jemal, et al. personally, I’ve lived downtown long enough to notice that Jemal has some serious issues managing his property business. (Much of this was confirmed during his trial a couple years ago, when former business associates testified that they suffered through massive property management incompetence because he just owns so much property you have to play ball with Douglas Development in downtown DC.) He never has two major projects going on at once, allegedly because he can’t get the financing from banks that don’t trust his business practices. The 10th & F location is almost certainly being cleared out now that 1299 F Street is finishing up. (Work on 1299 F started just as the Atlantic Building was completed. And the Atlantic Building started just after the Terrell Place complex was finished, I believe. Which followed the Woodie’s building, etc.)

So, even though I detest the blocks of empty storefronts with which Jemal has blessed our neighborhood, I do find it plausible that the current credit crunch won’t really affect him since he supposedly operates largely without outside financing. And I’d bet that all that shiny new ground-floor retail will sit empty for years as people wonder why.

Say I buy a building for 100 million. Retail on the ground floor… There is no way I could rent it out to mom & pop shops paying $15.00 psft. Reason? The bank would NEVER approve the Lease. Alot more goes into renting retail space than most people know. Just a thought…

Jemal’s business practices have been well documented elsewhere.

Randy’s right. DC’s current tax policies and business incentives skew towards high-end office and franchise retail, to the detriment of small locally-owned businesses. Until there is some change in those policies, this situation is unlikely to change.